The sound of an explosion came just seconds after a taxi driver dived inside. Another resounding boom followed, then another, then three more.

“Oh yo-yo yai!!!” cried the driver, resident of Sderot for the past 50 years.

“It’s close, in the neighbourhood”, he said referring to the rocket. “And it’s a hit for sure.”

As the alert ended a stunned, Itamar Zolberg, 31, the father of three young children, stepped out of his house to see what had happened, carefully avoiding a dent in the road where another rocket from Gaza landed several years ago.

In the distance, several black plumes of smoke rose up high. The nearby fields were on fire either from the rocket itself or the result of falling shrapnel after an interception by the Iron Dome – the Israel Defence Force’s missile defence system.

Shortly before this drama, Itamar and his wife Naomi had described to the Telegraph their experiences of rocket fire as two their children – Roni, 5 and Neria, 3 – chased each other around their living room.

Last week, during a drive from their house to pick up a relative from the train station – a trip that typically takes five minutes – Naomi, 30, had to stop twice for air-raid sirens.

“Once, I was able to run into a shelter. But the second time, there was nothing around. I just threw myself on the grass, and covered my head”.

On Monday, faced with rocket sirens whilst alone with all three children in the car and no shelter to be found near by, Naomi put her 10 month-old baby and the two older siblings, down on the pavement and covered them with her body. “I was absolutely terrified. You feel so helpless and so exposed”, she told The Telegraph.

“It’s important to keep as calm as possible for the children,” says Itamar.

“If we’re stressed then they get stressed. So we act as if we are fine, but inside I feel my whole body is clenched up, and my heart jumps at every sound.”

As a social worker, Naomi sees many people – some of them teenagers – suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after years-long exposure to rockets and sirens in Sderot.

“My daughter is too scared to take a shower alone,” she says.

Other children wet their beds, cling on to their parents for fear of being alone, and cry very easily.

Sderot is well known as the city of rockets, due to its proximity to the Gaza strip – its residents have suffered from hundreds of missiles launched in recent years.

Only last week, a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a factory, setting the building ablaze.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised military action “until the fire on our communities is over and the quiet is back.”

The Zolberg family clings on to hope that that quiet will come.

“I trust God to keep us alive,” says Itamar. “It’s already a miracle from God that here, despite thousands of rockets fired, we’ve had so few casualties”.